Government in South Africa still Target of Cyberattacks

Cybersecurity is still facing ongoing threats with scammers and hackers creating a new way to threaten the security of companies and individuals.

Security and risk leaders are still continuing to fight existing threats and coming up with ways to defend against emerging threats.

Artificial Intelligence tools, geopolitical uncertainty and increased cloud complexity have created a leeway to create new cybersecurity threats.

According to a new security report, the public sector finds itself the primary target of cyberattacks in South Africa.

Trellix, US -headquarters revealed that its research shows that 26% of the threats detected in the second quarter of this year were aimed at government systems.

Carlo Bolzonello, country head at Trellix South Africa said, “Despite not experiencing a significant surge in detections since the first quarter, we have noticed a worrisome trend of specialised, well-equipped and highly skilled threat actors.”

“What’s more alarming is their interconnection with extensive networks and potential state support, indicating a coordinated and sophisticated approach to their malicious activities.”

According to research conducted by Trellix, it reveals the Lazarus group–– part of an advanced persistent threats syndicate historically linked to the North Korean government by the US and Daggerfly as the most notable aggressors.

According to the report, these groups use various attacks such as distributed denial-of-service botnets, keyloggers and “living-off-the-land tooling” – a special kind of attack that can go undetected for extended periods.